App Reviews from Room 218

Thursday, April 10, 2014

The producers of Plasmaworks LLC have brought us another game. This time not only fun but educational as well. If you're familiar with the fun game scrabble blast that you could play in laptops then you'll love this because it's pretty much the same. Just an IPad edition.

After you're done downloading it, then once you click on it it'll pop you up to a blue menu asking you if you would like to play single player or multiplayer which I think is neat. Also it gives you choices like time management, if you want to see how many words you can get in a certain amount of time I would chose it. After you pick what you want there will be 6 by 7 stacked letters, a total of 42 unscrambled letters. The blocks around the letters are yellow and the letters inside are black. The next step is to try to make words with the letters you have. The longer the word is the more points you get. Also the letters with the least amount of words that it's in also are more points. For example you would get more points for a word with the letter Z in it than the letter A because A is in a lot of words and Z is in a small amount.
Another neat thing about this app is that it's really fun to play because it's a game that also teaches you words. If you can't think of any words then you can just guess and see which ones are actually words. It's really a good app for teachers so if they want their students to learn in a boring way no one would want to. But because it's a fun game and educational, kids would want to play it. last year when our teacher showed us the game Scrabble Blast last year everyone was playing it because it was the only game you could play in workshop. I would highly recommend this app.

The app Chempro is a fun and very helpful app. It can come to good use and is easy to use. It can
guide you through your chemistry class. It was created by iHelp NYC. This app is anything but short of knowledge with 80 video lessons on chemistry, but it doesn't stop there. It has more cool activities and helpful tools. The app itself is free but upon trying to try certain things I had to pay to use them. To purchase this app you must have a iOS 7.0 or later.

This app is beyond capable of helping you pass chemistry. As mentioned before, this app holds 80 useful lessons, ranging between 8 minutes to 30 minutes. Lessons clearly describe how to use it/how it works by showing you on the screen. If that wasn't enough each video throughly describes what is going on in the video. The learning doesn't stop there. Tapping on virtual flashcards I was brought different categories to help me memorize terms and study. Such as common element symbols. An example is a flash card pops up with silver. By tapping on it, the flash card flipped itself over to reveal it element symbol which in this case would be Ag. It's quick and easy to use. Tapping on tools brought me to a large and colorful periodic table. If I tap on a symbol, the app supplies me with information such as, the element number, the element name, the element symbol, and the elements atomic mass. It is very useful. In the top two corners there is a molar mass calculator and a unit converter. But as I tries to use them I discovered that I had to pay to use them. Now by tapping on the last page there was a large equation sheet. The equation sheet is pretty much self explanatory. It shows you equations to certain things such as, density, percent yield, molarity. The equation sheet is very easy to read and use. There are six information filled pages to help you.

So overall the app is a fantastic academic tool, if I had to recommend this app for someone, it would probably be for a high school student that plans on taking chemistry. The app would help the student better understand the material they are going over in the classroom, with the videos, periodic table, tools, and the equation sheet. The flash cards could help them study for an upcoming test.

Lumosity was created by Lumos Labs, Inc. It wil help you with memorization. To download this app it requires iOS 6.0 or later. Currently, it is version 2.92. Lumosity itself is free but does offer in-app purchases. I would recommend this app for grades 5 and up for understanding all school subjects.

Once your have downloaded and opened up Lumosity, you will find yourself in a home screen where you will have a choice of signing back in or getting started on your app! If you chose "Getting Started" it will take your through 5 multiple choice questions where you can pick more than one answer. What the questions consist of it your: memory, speed, attention, problem solving, and flexibility with your brain. After your results from that short survey, Lumosity will design you games that fit your needs. I consider it to be my "personal trainer" for my brain. The games look like colorful, fun, friendly, and exciting games. Sometimes I think about how are these helping my brain because I get so into it! Also, most of the time, when my day is considered "over" to Lumosity I go back and I mostly like to train my memory a lot more!

I do use Lumosity as much as I personally can! I even think adults would really benefit somehow through Lumosity. One out of two things I would recommend is making more "childish games" for children to almost get addicted to and want to comeback for more. Second, thing is having a settings area wear people may want to turn of the sound effects Lumosity has to offer (even though there is barely any, only on a few buttons) just so users may want to listen to there own music. Other than those two little things, I highly encourage you to download Lumosity!

Do you want a app that is good for drawing or sketching? Well this app is called Art Studio it is a app all about drawing. The people who developed and created this app are Sylvester Los, Paul Knight, Corliss Blakely, and Renata Los. This app was downloaded on all of our schools iPads and that told me right from the beginning that this app has to be good. This app is something that would be good to use in art class especially. Say your teacher gives you a drawing project to do at home and bring into class this app is what you could use.

This app allows you to pretty much draw anyway you want to. There are several different colors you can use such as colors in the rainbow plus neon colors and light colors. There are different utensils you can use like a marker, pencil, or even a highlighter. You can edit any picture you want. You could even draw a mustache and a beard! You can add text or captions to describe what the picture is you have drawn. You can draw something and then make several replicas of it and what I mean by that is that there is something called a stamp which you can draw something and then copy it which then makes hundreds of replicas that you can use over and over again.

Over all this is a really good app. Good for school use or just for fun. I use this app all the time and I'm not using it during school hours. I use it at home to play around and draw without wasting paper. Using this app it is twenty time better then actually wasting a ton of paper from messing up. While on this app you can erase it and not have to worry about any marks being left on the "paper".

You have to try this app! Doctors, and students like us that are in science class and are learning about the body and for students that are in med school this app could become their best friend. No one will be able to resist this app, BioDigital Human. This is a great biology app and is great for teachers that want to show their students. The creator of the app is BioDigital incorporated. BioDigital Human requires IOS 6.0 or later. It is comparable with the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.Once you get this app, school or whatever you need it for, you will love it. If you
are a science teacher then go to the App Store and get this app right now, your students will not be able to resist going on it because of the amazing 3D affect and the best thing about the app is is that it is free.When you first open the app, a body will show up. You can pinch and pull and if you want to then you can remove the skeleton or the muscles with just a push of a button. You go up to the top right of the screen and there will be three squares stacked on each other. Click on those squares and it will come up with the Anatomy layers, just click on one of the layers and next thing you know that layer will be off of the body in front of you so you can get a better view on what you are looking for or looking at. Another really cool gadget on this app is that if you look at the bottom of the screen there is three lines. If you click a body part and have the body part selected then click the three lines, it will give you a description on the body part you have selected. And that's not all there is an option at the top left corner and it says my human. If you click on it then three other options will come up and you can either look at the body, the eye cross section or the heart anatomy.Now it's your turn....take my word and go get this app. It will help you if you are having trouble as a med school or if you are a doctor and you want to show your patient what there problem is or whatever you need to do. Just trust me on this because after you get this app, you will be in love with it.

Think Fast is an app that will reel you in the more you work on it, it is a good app for social studies, it has great history facts from the past. Think Fast is created by WNET, it's free and it's available for iOS 1.0 so it's easy to get. It doesn't have any requirements to get it, it's easy to download and fun to play.The app is fun if you like history and it is pretty luring if you play and get into it. When you go on and play it will ask you which chapter you want to play on and you can choose either one, mission one is with Royce starting in 1770 and mission two is with Lucy starting in 1850. If you choose mission you have to chase something but you have to go through a series of questions to answer in order to get to the end and find what ever your supposed to be looking for. If you choose mission two you have to help get a message to someone you'll also be asked a series of questions to get to your objective. You will also be timed on your adventure. Chapter two teaches you about slavery like the Underground Railroad, certain people like slave owners and certain areas about slavery and slaves. Chapter one teaches you about when the pilgrims lived in America, about Ben Franklin, Jon Hancock, and acts like the quartering act.I would recommend this app to people who are either learning about slavery or if you even like history because I'm not a big fan of history but I like this app a lot and I think it is very fun, luring, and interesting.

Wednesday, April 9, 2014

This app Bluster is a game for students to learn more about rhyming, adjectives, prefixes and suffixes. So this is a language art app. The creators of Bluster is McGraw-Hill School Education Group. In order for this app to work properly you iPhone/iPad/iPod must have an update of iOS 5.0 or later.Once you've opened the app there is the sound of the pouring rain with crashing thunder. It will show a city with a rain cloud over it. The dark colored cloud with have rain and accessional lightening. Three orange buttons with white lettering will be on the screen. The top one will say play. Then the one bellow it will read honors. The very last one says how to play. If you tap the button that reads play then you should see three sky blue slides. The first one is how many players you want to play with. If you slide the first sky blue slide there will be three options; single, team and versus. The next slide down has another three options for the levels ; level two, level 3 and level 4. The last slide has options for what subject you want to play with; prefixes and suffixes, adjectives, and rhyming words. Once you choose your options there is a orange circle that says ok in white lettering. You tap that after all your choices. There is going to be different rules for different options. Let's say that you chose single, level 2 and rhyming. You would get a list of words ( You get a list of words for all the options ) and you would have to slide through the words to find three rhyming words. There will be three dark blue spaces above so you are able out the rhyming words. So you would drag one of the words from the list and drop it into one of the three blue spaces. You have a limited amount of time to get it done.Personally I think this app should be used for elementary school students. It's perfect for all ages. But during this app I got easily bored and didn't want to use it. So if you chose to get this app try using it on younger children instead if junior high students. If there was to be any improvement on this app I would recommend that it should have more levels and more options to chose from. Like the creators should put nouns and verbs in there.